LEGO and Star Wars have gone hand in hand over the decades. But I don’t think anyone could have expected anything like the recent LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy miniseries special. Premiering last week on Disney+, the entire Star Wars Galaxy gets completely mixed up when a powerful artifact is unearthed unearths a powerful artifact from a hidden Jedi temple. This results in a new, wondrously wild and twisted version of the galaxy where good guys are bad, bad guys are good.
The Beat had the opportunity to chat with showrunners and executive producers Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit. During our discussion, the duo explained how this Rebuild the Galaxy special differs from other multiverse stories as well as giving Jar Jar Binks his due.
Taimur Dar: When the first trailer for this Rebuild the Galaxy miniseries was release, Darth Jar Jar took the internet by storm. It’s safe to say that Jar Jar Binks is the “Bruno” of Star Wars. We don’t talk about him. Gotta ask if Darth Jar Jar was something you had to fight for or everyone on board from the get-go?
Benji Samit: We thought it would be something we would have to fight for. One of the first ideas we had we quickly realized is in the rebuilt galaxy that this might be the perfect opportunity to do Darth Jar Jar. We’ve enjoyed theorizing about it with other fans over the years. Now we finally had an opportunity. We wondered if we had to fight for it or if Ahmed [Best] would even do it. Luckily, when we first presented it to Lucasfilm, they laughed and were fully on board with it. When we talked with Ahmed about it, he was just as excited to do it.
Dan Hernandez: He was fully aware of all the theories and memes. He loved it. Concurrently with all of this, I think because of the 25th anniversary of Phantom Menace it has led to a reappraisal a little bit of the prequel trilogies. Certainly, people who are younger than we are. They have always loved them. I actually have always loved the prequels. Specifically, it has caused a reappraisal of the excellence of Ahmed’s performance as Jar Jar and the innovation of creating that character and being a trailblazer in the space of a digitally created character. It was unprecedented at the time he did it. He was really excited to come in and do something totally different. Ahmed improvised a lot of the lines that ended up in the show because Ahmed understands the character. He is the character. We’re just totally blown the way.
Dar: It goes without saying multiverse has been done to death in last few years. Deadpool said it best, “Wizard of Oz did it first and they did it best.” Despite the saturation of the multiverse, this LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy miniseries is quite compelling. How did you avoid falling into the obvious cliches of recent multiverse stories?
Samit: That’s a good question and something we definitely thought about as we were working on this. One big difference is what we’re saying in this is it’s not really a multiverse. There are the LEGO pieces that build up the galaxy and the pieces themselves get rearranged. There’s only one universe and it’s changed. It’s not that we’re saying there are so many different alternate Star Wars universes out there where different things are happening. There’s this set of LEGO bricks that built the Star Wars universe and we smashed them up and rebuilt it and that’s all that’s left. Along those lines, another thing that makes it feel a little different than other multiverse stuff is because of that it’s so connected to LEGO itself. It wasn’t like they found a way to force in a multiverse story that feels disconnected from the actual content itself. We had a real reason to do it.
Hernandez: I would also say having the main characters of the show all be original characters with Jedi Bob being a character that had been in the “LEGO sense” but not voiced or appeared in the other media. We had five original characters to tell this story. All of the other characters who we were more familiar with add texture and comedy. I think starting with those original characters allowed us to get to know them as we’re getting to know this new version of the galaxy. I think it feels fresher.
Samit: We also put some rules on it to help us in a different way from other multiverse stuff. Along those lines of what I was saying that there’ s just the one galaxy and it’s been rebuilt, within that there’s just the single character. Luke Skywalker was Luke in the old galaxy and now he’s “beach Luke.” It’s not beach Luke is going to be able to interact with classic Luke. We didn’t want to have a scene of five different Luke minifigs talking to each other. Even though what we were going for with the series was recreating the feel of dumping out your bin of LEGO and mixing and matching. Technically if you were to dump out your LEGO bin you would have five Luke minifigs and other multiples. But that’s where I think it would get into murky multiverse territory. If there are five Lukes talking to each other, what are the stakes of any of these Lukes? But this is Luke in this galaxy. There is no other Luke. When this is the Luke you’re stuck with now, it changes things.
Dar: The series ends on a major tease. I don’t know if you want to hold off on spoilers or say it.
Hernandez: We’ll say it. It’s the Landalorian and baby Grogu!
Dar: Can we expect there’s more to come?
Hernandez: I would say that we’re very hopeful. We definitely have a lot of ideas where we would take this story. As you can imagine there were so many characters and planets and creatures and ships that we just couldn’t get it into in four episodes. If we’re lucky enough to continue this story, we have plenty more ideas.
Dar: James Earl Jones sadly passed away the same week this LEGO Star Wars Rebild the Galaxy miniseries debuted. It’s no exaggeration to say Star Wars would not be the same without his iconic performance voicing Darth Vader. I’d love to hear what you feel he meant to the Star Wars franchise?
Samit: We unfortunately never had the opportunity to meet him. But I can certainly say we would not be sitting here if not for him. He is partly responsible for the momentous thing that Star Wars became. He created the most iconic villain of all time. His legacy is hard to even fathom the scale of it.
Hernandez: I completely agree. We’re so fortunate that there are still people around who were there at the beginning. Mark Hamill is in our special. We didn’t want to be nerds, but he would offer stories from the set of the making of A New Hope. He would say, “This reminds me of the time I was talking with George [Lucas] while we were filming the medal ceremony scene.” It’s just remarkable that it’s real and not mythological. These are real people and humans you can talk to. James Earl Jones accomplished so much while in the time he was on this planet. What a remarkable legacy to try to honor and live up to. I think the biggest testament is that it’s going to live on for many decades. People are going to remember Darth Vader and they’re going to remember Darth Vader because of James Earl Jones.
LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy is streaming now on Disney+
